


Butch Danes

by mame_loshn



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Femslash, Genderbending, Multi, Queer Character, Queer Themes, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:52:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8827609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mame_loshn/pseuds/mame_loshn
Summary: (The easiest and hardest thing about writing genderbent Luke Danes is that the character does not actually change at all.)A series of AU vignettes featuring Luke as a queer woman. Each chapter operates in dialogue with a single episode.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Our Knight of the Toast Daniel Mallory Ortberg gave us "Reasons Ryan Atwood from The OC Was A Lesbian" (http://the-toast.net/2016/02/25/reasons-ryan-atwood-from-the-o-c-was-a-lesbian/) and "Femslash Friday: Rory/Paris" (http://the-toast.net/2013/12/13/femslash-friday-rory-and-paris/) and Late-in-Life Lesbian Emily Gilmore (http://the-toast.net/2015/10/20/all-i-want-for-the-new-gilmore-girls-revival-is-for-emily-gilmore-to-become-a-late-in-life-lesbian/), and so this humble story is dedicated to the Toast (may its memory be a blessing), as well as Obvious TV Lesbian Luke--or should I say Luce--Danes.
> 
> (There are a few lines of dialogue in this chapter that I borrow from the inspiring episode, which have been duly noted below.)  
> “Oh my God.”  
> “What?”  
> “Nothing, nothing at all, Butch!”  
> “Oh for the love of--what's that doing there?”  
> “What's it doing?? It’s yelling ‘mock me, mock me!!’”  
> “It shouldn't be there.”  
> “Oh no, you're right, it should have its own special display at the diner with a big ol’ spotlight on it.”  
> “Don't they need my permission for this? This should be illegal.”  
> “Those shorts with that tank top should be illegal.”  
> “Okay, stop now.”  
> “What was your girlfriend’s name, Sissy?”  
> “As a matter of fact, no.”  
> “Oh, the girls just swooned when Butch Danes took the field.”  
> “I knew there was another good reason not to do this.”  
> “Oh, don't walk away, Butch! Well if I thought you didn't care, I’d die, I’d just die.” 
> 
> From Episode 3.04, “One’s Got Class and the Other One Dyes”

“Oh, the girls just _swooned_ when Butch Danes took the field!” Harassed, gussied up, and deeply uncomfortable at standing in, of all places, Stars Hollow High, Luce thinks her irritation could spike no higher until she realizes with dull horror that Lorelai’s obnoxious falsetto register echoes slightly in the school hallway. 

 

“I knew there was another good reason not to do this.” Luce stares at the unexpected shard of her history on quiet display for all to see, like some kind of awful archaeology exhibit. _All the better to gut me with,_ she thinks, staring at her eternally preserved teenage frown. She reads in the long, still body the freedom of track, hurling her body down as fast and far as she could, half-hoping to whizz right out of her skin if she could just push hard enough. Telling herself she liked the constriction of athletic shapewear simply for the sensible compactness it afforded her while running hurdles, and not because under the spandex and compressed breasts her heart beat a little more gladly for it.

 

“Oh, don’t walk away, Butch,” Lorelai chirps, fully invested in the dizzy comedy of which she is star and producer and director, and in which everyone else just holds on for dear life lest their belongings be suddenly recast as her costars. Luce has lost too many valuable possessions this way. “Well if I thought you didn't care, I'd die, I'd just die!”

 

Luce doesn't clearly remember if the old nickname started out as matter-of-fact adjective or passive pejorative. Gender and sexuality in the bizarre conventions of Stars Hollow were treated to the same intensely well-meaning but invasive public scrutiny as any other element of someone’s life, and so the nickname that cropped up as Luce slouched into puberty seemed as much of a comment on her sister Liz’s flighty, boy-crazy ways as anything Luce ever did. Butch Danes, who hung around after school behind the counter in her father’s hardware store when there wasn't track practice, carving small figures out of wood like household spirits. Generally well liked, though adults and kids alike would be hard pressed to name her close friends. Luce was often alone, sailing around the quiet county roads outside of town on her bike, chewing meditatively on plants she identified with her pocket flora guide. (She would never, ever have told Sookie that the freshness of certain herbs at the diner was due to Luce harvesting them herself on solitary walks. Some things were too precious to ever breathe aloud, lest you find yourself paying dearly in Gilmore mockery for the rest of your life). 

 

And, she thinks, cocking an eyebrow at Lorelai flailing around in her tailored suit dress, it’s not as though they were wrong about her. The nickname might not have stuck past adolescence, but under those flannels and the omnipresent baseball cap, Luce was butch, butch, butch right down to her bones. 

 

Maybe it was the frank appraisal in Luce’s eye that startled Lorelai out of her rhapsodic swoon, the exasperated _are you done yet_ that shaded in the right light into something sweeter. Luce wasn't much of a movie watcher, but Lorelai had conned her years ago into _Bringing Up Baby,_ claiming that it was essential viewing for a report Rory was writing on leopards and Luce shouldn't miss such a seminal nature documentary. In moments like these, the words of Cary Grant (that old queen) come floating back to her: _Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but--well, there haven't been any quiet moments._

 

When Luce finally stuffs Lorelai into the classroom to ramble at the children instead, note cards in hand, she catches sight of the shy edge of just such a quiet moment. Lorelai sincere, proud of her work at the inn, for once painfully earnest. Luce almost notices the world ‘adorable’ swimming around the surface of her mind when Lorelai stumbles, defenseless, into the merciless interrogation torture of curious teenagers. _Now here’s a nature documentary worth watching,_ Luce thinks, straightening her jacket as Lorelai sputters about her pregnancy and Life Choices and the Stars Hollow mom in the corner grows ramrod straight in icy outrage. Luce imagines Lorelai young like the eager scamps merrily eating her alive, huge-bellied and scared and forever the stubbornest idiot alive. _Even then we would have made quite the pair._ The ember of warmth that glows in Luce’s gut whenever she indulges this particular taboo thought suddenly flares, the heat that slyly ripples through her body when she catches one of Lorelai’s more genuine smiles unawares. Luce can tell when a woman is flirting with her (mostly, anyway. It’s taken practice), but Lorelai walks some incorrigible and unreadable high wire act that leaves Luce flustered, off-kilter, even as it seems as natural an extension of her life as the diner itself. This liminal place where lust and platonic appreciation mix into some impassable brackish swamp fed the creation of that chuppah for Lorelai’s ill-fated wedding to Max, years of Thanksgiving plates at the diner, and hours of fretting over rain gutters, coffee consumption, and the various quotidian delights and sorrows of the Gilmore household. 

 

Not that Luce was pining. She wasn't a piner. She didn't pine. She even dated, off and on. Rachel’s last whirl through town had clearly demonstrated that Luce was not pining. She'd even accepted the gentle suggestion that her trusty old strap (which she’d painstakingly fashioned herself, out of a distinct sense that anything worth doing she could do just fine on her own, thank you) no longer set off her small collection of toys to their most impressive effect ( _"I mean, Luce, there's something to be said for aesthetically pleasing qualities in addition to functionality, no?"_ ). Luce had indulged Rachel's hints as a sign of commitment to this latest attempt at making something of their on-again, off-again relationship (not that any gestures of good faith had saved that mess from an implosive end). Thinking about the new (expensive) harness made her feel especially moody, as it had barely been broken in at all before Rachel split again, her absence leaving a newly single and unsettled Luce dangerously close to noticing how much she craved Lorelai’s presence, that this friendship was, more than likely, the most meaningful of her life--

 

Lorelai is still floundering hard at the front of the room, which Luce is rather enjoying, to be honest, watching her garrulous friend at a loss for a verbal lifeline out of this shitshow. Luce wonders idly how it would feel to run her calloused, burn-scarred hands up Lorelai’s thighs in semi-worship, to find the fulcrum balancing her, and to tip it past performance into presence, Luce drinking deep from her, body trembling from the sweet, musky scent of Lorelai’s arousal on her face and hands--

 

Too far. Luce can feel the flush of desire deep within her body rising up her face and neck, and immediately curses herself. Of all places, this classroom isn't where she wants to indulge these thoughts, not now that it’s her turn to stand up and growl out some nonsense about local business ownership, or whatever. She feels the shadow of her teenage self, Butch Danes lolling long-limbed in her letter jacket and scuffed tennis shoes, rolling her eyes in scorn. _So old and still all goofy about clever girls with pretty eyes. Our adulthood is a total crock._

_You're the worst and you don't know anything about it,_ Luce snaps back irritably, before coming to the unpleasant realization that, a scant few moments into her presentation, she has trailed off in the middle of a sentence about inventory ordering while indulging this bizarre internal skirmish.

 

“Uh. And that is why you shouldn't let Jess order your stock,” she says, distantly aware that there's very little she could do to bomb this presentation harder than Lorelai, whose dead-eyed expression telegraphs a strong urge to prostrate herself on the floor in abject agony. She tries not to return to the mental image of Lorelai prostrate, despite the gravitational pull it tries to exert.

 

When it is all mercifully over, they step back out into the chill air together, an uncharacteristic quiet muffling conversation. 

 

“Well, Butch,” says Lorelai.

 

“Don’t call me that.”

 

“Well, Butch, I don’t think that could have gone much worse, Butch.”

 

“Eh, they could have asked for specific details about the act of conception itself. Y’know, pointers, that kind of thing.”

 

“Gaaaaah,” says Lorelai. “I am still traumatized by that shrine to your hideous track uniform, I cannot handle you attempting to make jokes at the same time.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

Luce suddenly feels a strong urge to be elsewhere, to be alone, to bury herself in some menial task that will scrub away both memories of her awkward adolescence and her present desire to bite Lorelai just above the collar of her coat.

 

“I’ve got some things I have to do. Come by the diner later after you’ve recovered a little from the shock, and if you agree never to call me Butch again I promise I won’t try to slip you a cup of decaf.”

 

“In my delicate state of dismay after being thrown defenseless to those savage children, I don’t know how you could _think_ of making demands of me,” trills Lorelai, but her eyes are soft as she looks at Luce. “You look nice, by the way.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Luce kicks at a spot on the ground and wonders if maybe her internal baby self was correct, and this all is, in fact, a crock. “I’ll see you later.” She turns away from Lorelai as though to head back to the diner, but as soon as she is out of sight breaks into a run toward the woods, feeling her limbs pound with blood and breath and each jarring impact on the frozen earth. She can feel her shirt soak through with sweat and come untucked and flapping from her pants, her dress shoes pressing painfully into her feet as she sprints along the sylvan perimeter of Stars Hollow. When finally she skids to a halt, she collapses into a sprawl on the earth, heedless of the dirt mixing to mud with her sweat, gasping for breath which becomes laughter, raucous, a ragged cry breaking from her chest and rising disembodied from the trees towards the filmy, empty winter sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luce holds space for Dean on the night before his wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on events in S04e04, "Chicken or Beef?" 
> 
> While much of the dialogue is in paraphrase from that episode, I haven't explicitly borrowed exact wording.

Most nights, the cleanup ritual after Luce flips the diner’s sign to ‘Closed’ is quiet, almost meditative. Even when Cesar or Jess help to wipe down and mop and restore everything to order for the next morning, their well-rehearsed roles leave little room for dithering or confusion or conversation. Luce likes that: the smooth choreography of swinging chairs atop empty tables, the mop’s bleach-scented arabesques across the floor. For all its (dubious) small town charm, a life in Stars Hollow is often punctuated by unanticipated and bizarre intrusions (Luce has gotten into the habit of keeping a stress ball in her pocket onto which she’d drawn a crude likeness of Taylor, but she’s already burst three of them since he moved into that ridiculous Old Fashioned Soda Shoppe next door without any apparent mitigation of her stress). These moments of peace are remarkably scarce, and therefore precious.

She is just rolling up her sleeves and considering whether it would be too wild to switch on the staticky radio when the sound of carousing spills through the street, growing ever louder until the bell over the door heralds a passel of drunk boys tumbling into the diner like boozy puppies. Luce can see how hard they are trying to disguise their youth under the auspices of manhood, from Kyle in his sailor uniform and braces to Dean’s valiant attempt to sport sparse facial hair. She’d watched all of them grow up in this town, can see the vestiges of childhood in the rounded contours of their cheeks, and she feels a momentary tenderness for the growing pains of the abstract threshold on which they stand before it is drowned by exasperation at their arrival on her actual threshold after closing.

“LUUUUUCE!” They shout, trailing off at the end of the Stars Hollow High fight song to acknowledge her and the promise of food her appearance presages. She sighs imperceptibly, slung, as always when confronted with social ritual, between affinity and estrangement, resonance and dissonance. She has never considered herself a caretaker of young people, especially boys, before Jess dropped into her world and shattered, well, pretty much everything within range of his sneer. And there is certainly a great deal about the intricacies of masculine performance that alienates Luce, not least this pack-like _hollering and guffawing_ , which would give her a headache if it continued too much longer. Dean’s mouth hangs open, his eyes glazed, much further gone than any of his friends. Her eyes linger on him for a few moments longer than the others, questioning. He leans a little too heavily on the back of the chair to stay upright for her liking, and he won’t meet her gaze. 

“Diner’s closed, boys.” A collective groan arises.

“But Luuuuuce, Dean’s getting married tomorrow! We’re taking him out for his last night of freedom! And we’re starving!”

“Yeah, this is phase two of the bachelor party--refueling to keep our strength up!” One of the foolhardier partiers tried to high-five her, but shrivels away when she raises an eyebrow so high it nearly meets the rim of her cap. 

“What was phase one?”

“BEER!” They all chorus together, before breaking into another off-key rendition of the Stars Hollow High fight song. 

“So I should have smelled.” She looks past Kyle, eager in his crisp whites to maintain a veneer of respectability despite the snickering behind him, trying to catch Dean’s dull eye. “Alright, fellas, what do you say to some pancakes? Soak up some of what you’ve got in your guts, see if we can’t help some of you rally?” A cheer goes up in response, and two of the idiots take this as permission to start shoving two of the tables together. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Luce barks. 

“Uh--”

“Now, now, have some respect, men!” Kyle hurriedly steps in, sober enough to recognize the look on Luce’s face for the warning it is. “We’ll just have our pancakes and be on our way, ma’am.”

“To get strippers!” Luce rolls her eyes skyward and is grateful once again to have avoided these kind of group bonding rituals in her adolescence. Dean stumbles forward to the counter and sinks his head down onto his folded arms. He is still skinny enough that Luce can see his shoulder blades tent the back of his shirt. She is pouring grounds into the coffee filter when his voice insinuates itself behind her into the general din.

“Rory.” The hooting Luce has been ignoring quiets.

“What did he say?” Dean’s forehead hits the laminate countertop as his arms slip down to his sides.

“Rory.” 

“Alright fellas, why don’t you wrap up the festivities for tonight,” Luce steps out from around the counter and settles her tall, muscular frame in between the revelers and Dean’s slumped form. “After all, Dean’s getting married in the morning, and we all want him to be presentable, don’t we? I’ll make sure he gets home okay, don’t worry about it,” she says to Kyle, who is peering like a mother hen around Luce at his friend.

“You sure, Luce?”

“Yeah, I got it. Go on, get your beauty sleep.”

As the remains of the bachelor party tumble back out onto the street, Luce listens to their voices fade away.

“Weren’t we going to get pancakes?”

“Weren’t we going to find strippers?”

“Did I hear Dean saying something about Rory?”

She hadn’t truly appreciated how goddamn tall Dean actually was until hoisting him up the stairs to her apartment, his weight sagging against her. It would probably be best to take him to the little bathroom where he could throw up, drink some water, maybe take an aspirin or two, but it is all Luce can do to heave the groom-to-be into Jess’ old bed before Dean curls in on himself in unselfconscious misery, burrowing like a tick into the blankets. She rubs a hand along the back of her neck, ruffling the curls that protrude from under the bill of her baseball cap, unsure of what exactly to do with with a soggy kid barely out of boyhood hurling himself into a marriage he barely understands, or where letting him crash fits within the terms of their tentative detante over Jess’ departure. _I don’t know how this became a halfway house for boys mooning over Rory Gilmore_ , she thinks, as Dean’s heavy, beer-soaked breathing gives way to a low moan. _Something messed up happened to these kids if I’m their best option for a relationship advisor._

“Rory...Rory…”

Luce stands incredibly still, arms crossed, watching the ghost of sobs ripple over Dean’s taut back. He seems only distantly aware of her, locked in some drunken solipsistic spiral of self-loathing. She considers searching him for a cell phone in order to confiscate it, just in case. 

“She’s so smart, you know? She’s so pretty and smart and she’s going to change the world. And she has...hair, y’know? It’s so shiny and...hair, it’s the best hair.” Luce herself has often wondered in detached fascination what kind of products Lorelai and her daughter used, though now doesn’t seem like the best moment to commiserate on this particular subject. The silence stretches out and out, until Luce begins to suspect that Dean has fallen asleep. 

“Luce...why didn’t she love me? Why wasn’t I...why didn’t Rory love me?” Dean’s voice is soft and plaintive. Luce’s stomach drops, and sadness like a gust of sleet blows through her. 

“Oh, kid. I don’t think she didn’t love you.”

“She didn’t, she didn’t, why didn’t she? Why did she leave me?”

Luce’s gut is in knots: she notices discomfort with this proximity to the rawness of Dean’s grief, a vague tickle of allegiance to Jess even in absentia, the vast chasm of silence that opens up inside her thinking about this question, unanswerable. She sighs, sits down on the end of the bed, careful not to let any part of her body within even accidental touching distance of Dean. 

“She loved you. Don’t ask me how I know, but she did. Sometimes...sometimes things just don’t work out.” The words sound ridiculous, shredding into nothing like wet tissue even as they leave her mouth. 

“So smart so pretty hair.” Dean’s voice is slurred now not only by cheap beer but by sleep as it descends upon him. “I wasn’t good enough. She wanted Jess.”

“Oh, Dean, now come on--” 

But then there is a soft puppy snore coming from the bed, and whatever desperate exhortations had been gaining steam inside her, there is nothing for Luce to do but to cover the tear-streaked boy with a blanket. She moves to the window to look out at the empty street below saturated with chilly moonlight. Nothing moves in the center of town where Lindsay’s wedding decorations garland the gazebo, not even a stray cat slinking underneath the benches or a breeze stirring the sprays of silk flowers. Despite the lateness of the hour, Luce does not step away for a very long time.

 

*****

Dean’s hair falls in a curtain over his forehead the next morning, obscuring his eyes from view as Luce hands him a glass of water. 

“Drink it,” she says. “You’re getting married today.” 

“Yeah,” he says, flatly. She can’t tell if he’s stiff from a hangover or embarrassment, until he raises his eyes to hers and the bleakness in them startles her befores resignation falls like curtains over his expression. “Thanks for letting me stay last night. Took me a minute to figure out where I was, but I’m grateful.”

He is always unfailingly polite, Dean. It isn’t actually a trait Luce particularly likes, to be honest--Jess was a little punk and a pain in the ass every moment of his life, but she’d caught him in infrequent moments of kindness that gave her distant hope for the adult he would become, rooted in some internal complexity he did his best to obscure. Jess’ underdeveloped gentleness always made her wonder about its obverse in Dean, a cruelty that perhaps could only manifest when unobserved. Luce knows a thing or two about hiding in plain sight, how to let a heart be a garden to cultivate or leave fallow. When you practice something long enough, you learn to see it in others.

“Ah, well. Don’t mention it.” The specter of so many unspoken things fills the air between them, Jess hardly the least of them, until Luce almost has to push through a sense of claustrophobia. “Do you...want to talk? Or have something to eat?” Dean shakes his head, winces.

“Nah, thanks. I have to be at the church in an hour in my tux and everything.” As he speaks, Luce can see more of his childhood falling away from his face, giving way to a set hardness that disturbs her. She laughs to defuse her discomfort.

“Probably for the best, I’m not so great at talking, anyway.” Dean gives her a perfunctory grin, moves slowly toward the door. 

“Luce, I…” he trails off, hand on the doorknob. “Thanks.” And with that, he is gone, and Luce is alone with his rumpled blankets, the distant bell of the front door, the sounds of the town shaking itself awake outside.

 

*******  
If Luce were the praying type, she’d offer one up for the serendipity of running into Rory before the nuptials began.

“Rory, don’t go to Dean's wedding. Trust me, it’s for the best.” 

“Oh.” Those huge blue eyes narrow slightly, as Rory tries to understand why Luce is weighing in on this at all. “But--” Luce loves Rory Gilmore more than life, like her own kid, but for an infinitesimal flash something unnameable and white-hot floods her body. Like the boy-men who’d piled into the diner the night before, Rory has one foot over some threshold, spinning some chrysalis around herself even as Luce watches that will one day break open and disgorge her, fully adult. This is the first moment Luce is unsure that she will wholly like what wetly unfurls from that transformation.

“Seriously, Rory. Believe me when I say this--it’ll be better if you don’t go. Send a gift if you want, but--just stay away.” 

“Oh, I mean--okay.” Rory steps away from Luce, and the thing-that-wasn’t-anger dissolves into pity. None of this is actually Rory’s fault, Luce reminds herself. “I’ll just go find my mom, then. Let her know I’m looking for her, if she comes by?”

“Yeah, I will,” says Luce, wondering if she’ll mention the previous night to Lorelai. She decides almost instantly against it, watching Rory hurry tight-shouldered off down the street as people in formalwear swarm over the church steps in the distance. There are some silences that are too costly to break.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sunny morning in the diner. An initial meeting. A scribbled horoscope. A request, as ever, for coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a reminiscence detailed in Episode 5.03, "Written in the Stars." 
> 
> Lorelai: I was just trying to remember the first time we met. It must have been at Luke's, right?  
> Luke: It was at Luke's, it was at lunch, it was a very busy day. The place was packed. And this person...  
> Lorelai: Oh, is it me? Is it me?  
> Luke: This person comes tearing into the place, in a caffeine frenzy...  
> Lorelai: Ooh, it's me!  
> Luke: I'm with a customer, she interrupts me, wild-eyed, begging for coffee. So I tell her to wait her turn. Then she starts following me around, talking a mile a minute, saying God knows what. Finally I turn to her, and tell her she's being annoying. Sit down, shut up... and I'll get to her when I get to her.  
> Lorelai: You know, I bet she took that very well, 'cause she sounds just delightful.  
> Luke: She asked me my birthday. I wouldn't tell her, she wouldn't stop talking, finally I gave in. I told her my birthday. She went and got the newspaper, opened it up to the horoscopes page, wrote something down, tore it out, handed it to me. So I was looking at this piece of paper in my hand, and under Scorpio, she had written "You will meet an annoying woman. Give her coffee, and she'll go away". So I gave her coffee.  
> Lorelai: But she didn't go away!  
> Luke: She told me to hold onto that horoscope, put it in my wallet, and one day it would bring me luck.  
> Lorelai: Boy, I will say anything for a cup of coffee! I can't believe you kept this. You kept this in your wallet? You kept this in your wallet...  
> Luke: Eight years.  
> Lorelai: Eight years...  
> *

She never expected running a business to be easy. Each day when Luce rises before the sun (or with it, on those blistering summer days when the heat shimmer rising from the macadam of the Stars Hollow streets burns through the soles of her tennis shoes), she makes a mental list of the suppliers, customers, debts, employees, and minor repairs that will inevitably demand attention before eight AM even rolls around. It doesn’t help that Luce is a woman in her late twenties, a fact that never escapes the attention of the suppliers on the other end of the phone, who audibly perk up at the sound of her low, sonorous voice. 

“You got a voice like Lauren Bacall, you know that?”

“Yeah, and legs like Bogart’s. You wanna focus and tell me why my condiments restock is three days late?”

Despite her youth, no one in Stars Hollow crosses her twice--with the exception of Taylor Doose, who dropped broad, clumsy hints in town meetings about the importance of experienced mentorship for “the new generation of local entrepreneurs” until Luce lost her patience, swore at him, and stormed out, not to return for six entire months. When she finally came back at Miss Patty’s well-meaning urging, she slumped in the back of the room with her arms crossed, long denim-sheathed legs spread in front of her. Taylor squinted, harrumphed, and snapped at everyone for the rest of the evening, but refrained (probably under extreme duress from Miss Patty) from making any additional offers to “show the young members of our business community the ropes, since most new endeavors fail within the first couple of years.”

Luce knows that her decision to convert the old hardware store into a diner was met with several raised eyebrows around town, but Stars Hollow quickly warmed to any competent alternative to Al’s Pancake World. Each mealtime period now brings in a brisk trade of tourists and locals, some of whom are even becoming regulars. She’s still only breaking even paying off some of her startup loans, but Luce is beginning to feel confident that the diner will be a town fixture well into the future.

The bell over the door chimes, though the sound is lost on Luce in the din of lunchtime chatter. Peak traffic has grown enough that she really needs to hire more wait staff, but most of the applicants she’s interviewed so far have annoyed her (gum-chewers, close-talkers, arm-touchers). She can smell that the new line cook, Caesar, is burning something in the kitchen, and at table three, Babette is trying to surreptitiously feed bites of her tuna salad to the ill-concealed cat in her purse. 

_I’ve told her a million times I can’t have her bringing her damn pets in here._ A headache weaves across her forehead from temple to temple, and Luce pinches the bridge of her nose before turning to Kirk, who is counting out the payment for his coffee and omelet in pennies at the counter. 

“You couldn’t have brought those to the bank first, Kirk? You’ve gotta hand them all to me here to count out?”

“Mother and I have been collecting these pennies since I was in kindergarten, and I’m finally getting to use them.” Kirk doesn’t even look up at Luce, but swipes his hands through the teetering stacks of coins in frustration. “Now you’ve made me lose count, and I’m going to have to start all over again.”

 _You are not allowed to hit him. Not with this many witnesses around._

Someone taps Luce on the shoulder, and she grits her teeth before wheeling around.

“What--” She is looking into the bluest eyes she has ever seen, and a fall of long, dark hair over high cheekbones. She flushes and adjusts her baseball cap, hyper-conscious of the grease spatters on the hem of her shirt. 

“Coffee? Coffee coffee coffee?” The woman dances a bit from foot to foot as she speaks, the rhinestones on her graphic tee refracting the morning light. The effect vacillates between endearing and disturbing. Luce shakes her head, squares her shoulders, and turns back to Kirk. 

“You’ll have to wait a minute, I’m with this customer here--”

“You interrupted me, and I’m going to need more than a minute to start counting from the beginning again, Luce. Don’t rush me!” Kirk’s harassed whine slices across Luce’s fraying nerves, and she ducks behind the counter to peek into the kitchen to determine exactly which order Caesar is ruining. The line cook shrugs at her with an apologetic grin from above the grill. He’s chipping a lump of something charred and unrecognizable off of its surface. Undeterred, the woman follows Luce to the counter. 

“Hey! I’d like a coffee? A big one? The biggest one you’ve got? If you have a kiddie pool somewhere you can just fill up for me, that would probably be ideal. Not that I’m going to swim in it. No, I’m just waiting for the day they make caffeine injectable, and then we can bypass this whole beverage ritual altogether.”

Luce turns to face her, and over the woman’s shoulder spies the young couple at table six trying to catch her eye for the check, and the tidy family at table two closing their menus decisively. The coffee pot is empty, not even the dregs of the last brew cooling at the bottom. 

_Goddammit._

“Yeah, I’m going to need you to wait your turn. Kirk, keep counting.” Luce pushes past the woman, trying not to notice the fit of her jeans over her ass. _She wants a coffee, not your phone number._ She pulls her pad out of the apron tied around her hips, and opens her mouth to ask the family for their orders.

“Excuse me, folks,” the woman has followed Luce to the table, and is yammering at a speed that feels like a jackhammer on the fault lines of Luce’s burgeoning headache. “You look like a fine, upstanding group, and I would never want to compromise your dining experience, but I am in dire need of a caffeine fix and I was hoping that I might trouble your server here for just a few drops of coffee before I slip into some kind of fugue state.” The family, a cleancut group of WASPy tourists in matching Vineyard Vines togs, stare at the woman in polite confusion. Luce clears her throat.

“I’ll be right back.” She seizes the woman by the elbow, and drags her away from the table. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you’re being very annoying, to me and to my customers. Sit down, shut up, and wait your turn.”

The woman smiles at her and cocks her head. Luce flushes again and drops her elbow. _Don’t fidget. Don’t stare. She’s possibly dangerous._ A loud meow breaks the moment.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Babette, get that damn cat out of here.” Luce turns away from the woman away to face Babette, who is trying and failing to affect guilt as Cinnamon contentedly licks her fingers clean.

“Look at that, even a cat is getting better service in here than I am.” The woman is at Luce’s shoulder again, and the smell of her hair fills Luce’s nostrils as she shakes the dark mane in mock consternation. “I want but for a single goblet of manna, my lady.” Luce closes her eyes and wishes a meteor would strike the diner. _Now! Let it be now!_ “When’s your birthday, by the way?” 

“My birthday.”

“Yes, when is it?” 

Luce scribbles a few lines on her order pad, and rips off a page to hand to the impatient couple scowling at table six.

“Whenever you’re ready, folks, you can bring that up to the register at the counter. Thanks for coming in.” She fakes a smile, showing her teeth in a way that makes the couple recoil. The woman is still hovering at her shoulder, so that Luce nearly strides into her when she turns around. 

“This is incredibly important. The very future of this diner may rest on your answer.”

“I’m not telling you when my birthday is. Go sit at the counter and I’ll get to you when I can.”

Luce tries to turn back to the LL Bean family at table two muttering to each other and shooting the woman poisonous glances, but her chatty shadow steps smoothly between them. Her body is very close to Luce’s, and she leans in, conspiratorial and sly. The smile is gone from her full lips, but Luce can see it dancing in those dark-lashed eyes.

“Go ahead and tell me. I’ll just guess it anyway if you don’t. I have a knack for knowing those kinds of things about people.” The woman’s eyes flick up and down Luce’s long, rangy body, and she winks. Luce’s mouth goes dry.

“November third.” Her voice is raspy, and she has to clear her throat. The woman nods, and flits away. Stunned by her good fortune and by the sudden silence, Luce is able to take the entire J. Crew family’s order and put on a fresh pot of coffee to brew before the woman returns to the counter, newspaper in hand. She leans over and plucks Luce’s pen out from behind her ear. 

“Hey! What are you--”

“Here you go, Luce! Seven dollars and fifty cents in pennies.” Kirk interrupts, gesturing proudly at the stacks and stacks of coppery coins arrayed before him. Luce stares at the counter, not at Kirk’s ridiculous piles of change, but at the subtle play of tendon and muscle beneath the pale skin of the woman’s forearm as she scribbles on a section of the newspaper with Luce’s pen. 

Kirk frowns. “Luce? Do you want to watch me count this out for you?”

“What? Uh, no, Kirk. I trust you.” He goggles at her, mouth hanging open. 

“Since when?”

The woman tears a square of text from the newsprint, and offers it to Luce with her pen. Her fingers brush Luce’s as the paper transfers hands, and Luce swallows hard.

“Why don’t you run along now, Kirk?” Though she addresses the awkward man slouched on the counter stool, the woman’s eyes haven’t left Luce’s, and that impish smile spreads again across her face. Kirk furrows his brows, now suspicious.

“Who are you?”

“Lorelai Gilmore. I work at the Independence Inn.” Again, she keeps her eyes on Luce, and it is to her that she offers her hand to shake. Lorelai’s grasp is firm and sure, her palm cool. She tips her chin to the newsprint in Luce’s hand. “You going to read that?”

Luce ducks her head to examine the handwritten scrawl. The paper has been torn from the daily horoscope section. Under Scorpio, Lorelai has written _You will meet an annoying woman. Give her coffee, and she’ll go away._ Despite herself, Luce stifles a snort of amusement. Lorelai half-shrugs.

“What can you do? It’s written in the stars. So how about that coffee? To go?” Luce rolls her eyes, and steps behind the counter. Kirk senses an opportunity for escape, and bolts from the diner, in his rush inadvertently leaving his sack of remaining pennies on the counter next to his bill. Luce steadies a paper cup with one hand and with the other pours a long, fragrant stream of fresh coffee from the carafe. Lorelai slips her cash across the counter, and brings the steaming cup to her face. Her eyes close in unaffected bliss, and a small private smile curls her lips. The moment is intimate, barely large enough to fit Lorelai alone, and Luce pushes down a feeling that she is intruding on something deeply personal. Despite her apprehension, she cannot look away.

“You make a good cup of coffee. I can tell by the smell alone.” Lorelai has fixed Luce in that piercing blue gaze again, running her through as though she’s been pinned to a mounting board like an entomology specimen. The sensation isn’t wholly unpleasant. Lorelai taps the ziploc of pennies with a pink fingernail. “You going to pocket these extra pennies? Make him beg when he comes back?” Luce scuffs a toe against the linoleum.

“Nah, then I’d have to talk to him for longer. Better to keep it businesslike.”

“Speaking of.” Lorelai glances at her watch, snaps the plastic lid onto her to-go cup, and rises to stand. “By the way, you should hang on to that horoscope. Put in in your wallet. It’ll bring you luck.”

“Oh yeah?” Luce wishes she had a better retort, something smooth and winning, but Lorelai smiles at her as though those two words were scintillating banter. She takes a small sip from the cup in her hand. 

“I was right. This is the best coffee in town.” She turns to go and crosses the diner in a few steps of her long, slim legs, but pauses with her hand on the doorknob. “See you around, Luce.” With the tinkling of the bell, Lorelai is gone, and the cheerful hum of the lunch crowd comes rushing back in her absence. Luce stares after her for a few moments before sweeping the stacks of Kirk’s pennies into her hand and dumping them into the register. The horoscope lies on the counter next to Kirk’s cold plate. Luce reaches for it and hesitates, about to crumple it into the soiled napkin beside it. Instead, she folds it over, and tucks it into the battered leather wallet she extracts from her back pocket. She lets her hand rest on the pocket for an extra beat as she returns the wallet to its customary spot. Suddenly self-conscious, she adjusts her backwards baseball cap and begins to clear Kirk’s place with quick, expert movements, avoiding the eyes of any of the customers chattering in the warm morning light diffusing throughout her diner.

********************************************************************************************************************************  
_Boy, I’ll say anything for a cup of coffee. I can’t believe you kept this. You kept this in your wallet? You kept this in your wallet…_

_Eight years._

_Eight years..._


End file.
